When planning your wedding, you should consider having someone in your wedding party or a family member read a love poem, biblical verse or other piece of prose during the ceremony. In making your selection, just make sure that it is not too long. You don’t want to bore your guests!
Here are a few of my favorite choices, which will add a touch of class to both civil and religious wedding ceremonies.
If Thou Must Love Me
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say,
‘I love her for her smile - her look - her way
Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’ -
For these things in themselves, beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee - and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.
Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her
Christopher Brennan
If questioning would make us wise
No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
If all our tale were told in speech
No mouths would wander each to each.
Were spirits free from mortal mesh
And love not bound in hearts of flesh
No aching breasts would yearn to meet
And find their ecstasy complete.
For who is there that lives and knows
The secret powers by which he grows?
Were knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?
Then seek not, sweet, the “If” and “Why”
I love you now until I die.
For I must love because I live
And life in me is what you give.
The Art Of A Good Marriage
(shortened version)
Wilferd Arlan Peterson
A good marriage must be created.
In marriage the little things are the big things…
It is never being too old to hold hands,
It is remembering to say “I love you” at least once a day,
It is never going to sleep angry,
It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives,
It is standing together and facing the world,
It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family,
It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways,
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget,
It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow,
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful,
It is not only marrying the right person, it is being the right partner.
Father daughter wedding songs came to my mind recently when I heard the song “Brown Eyed Girl” on an internet radio station. This is the song that I danced with my daughter at my wedding in May of 2006. My daughter and I both looked forward to this dance very much, and it was wonderful (yes, that’s the real picture there). I guess it goes to show that you should choose your weddings songs carefully, because they will remind you of that day every time you hear them, probably forever. I decided to come up with a list of the 10 best father daughter wedding songs. Okay, so this list might be a little bit biased, but you get the big picture.